GIGABYTE Super4 A75-UD4H Socket FM1 Motherboard Review

GIGABYTE A75-UD4H

When it comes to enthusiast computer components GIGABYTE is definitely a household name. With more than 20 years of experience in the industry, GIGABYTE has a pretty good idea of what makes the industry tick. Today we have one of AMD A75 motherboards from GIGABYTE’s “Super4” collection. The GIGABYTE A75-UD4H is designed for AMD APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) and takes advantage of the new AMD Socket FM1 as well as the AMD A75 chipset.

GIGABYTE has a number of AMD A75 motherboards available ranging in price from $82.99 for the GIGABYTE A75M-S2V up to $114.99 for the A75-UD4H. All five of the GIGABYTE A75 motherboards currently have a $10.00 rebate attached to them as well as free shipping at Newegg.com.

Each of the five boards above is packed with different features, and GIGABYTE is sure to have one that will fit your needs if the A75-UD4H isn’t quite right for you. Three of the boards are micro-ATX, while the remaining two are full ATX motherboards. The GIGABYTE A75-UD4 is of the full ATX flavor and happens to be the top offering from GIGABYTE’s AMD A75 product line up. Some of the technology that makes the GIGABYTE A75-UD4H the board that it is, comes from the AMD A8-3850 APU. The AMD A-series APU’s feature a discrete level Graphics card built into the chip. The A8-3850 we will be using today features an AMD Radeon HD 6550D that takes full advantage of Microsoft DirectX 11 graphics. If you want to check out the technology that comprises the AMD A8-3850 you can check out the full review of it here, or the AMD A6-3650 review if that APU fits your needs better.

When you combine the AMD A-Series APU with another AMD discrete level graphics card you can combine it with the onboard graphics for better performance. This isn’t CrossfireX as we know it, though its remarkably similar and marketed as AMD Dual Graphics. Not all AMD graphics cards will work with AMD Dual Graphics, looking at the chart below from AMD, we can see that it is a rather limited selection of discrete graphics cards that will work. It would be nice if we could use some of the higher end cards in AMD Dual Graphics card configurations, though we probably wouldn’t see much of a boost if any using a graphics card like the AMD Radeon HD 6800 series or higher. Though, it would be fun to see how they would work together.

The AMD Dual Graphics may not be CrossFireX, the GIGABYTE A75-UD4H does support CrossFireX. It is limited to an x8,x8 configuration, but we haven’t seen anything that has missed out on the bandwidth. Perhaps if you were to run a pair of cards like the AMD Radeon HD 6990’s you may see a slight drop in scaling performance compared to an AMD FX-8150 in a AMD 990FX motherboard. Though, why would anyone run a pair of $700.00+ graphics cards in a platform that is designed to be easy on the wallet?

It was mentioned above about the GIGABYTE A75-UD4H being part of the GIGABYTE Super4 collection of motherboards. What exactly does that mean though? The first part is Super Safe. All of the Super4 motherboards have a number of features designed to keep your hardware, software, and data safer. If you have ever managed to botch a BIOS flash, or simply had your BIOS become corrupted, you know that it can be a nightmare to solve. Each of the Super4 motherboards runs DualBIOS. The traditional USB port design has one fuse per group of ports, the GIGABYTE Super4 motherboards dedicate one fuse to each port. If one fuse goes, you don’t lose all of the ports in that block of USB ports.

The second phase of the Super4 is Super Speed. The Super Speed consists of Ultra Durable 3 Classic, which uses 2 ounces of copper for the power and ground layers. This will dramatically lower the system temperatures by creating a more efficient dissipation of heat from the high temperature areas like the CPU socket. We also have 3x USB Power Boost, this gives the GIGABYTE A75-UD4H better compatibility as well as extra power for the high power USB devices. We also have the GIGABYTE On/Off Charge technology that will charge USB devices such as your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch even when the computer is shut down.

The remaining two phases of the GIGABYTE Super4 class of motherboards is Super Savings, and Super Sound. The Super Savings motherboards are built with top quality components to ensure your system is running at peak efficiency. The Super Sound motherboards all feature high quaility 7.1 surround sound audio and is backed by a proprietary converter that can achieve a 108dB noise ration playback quality.